Clinical Relevance of Racial and Ethnic Differences in Sex Steroids

Racial/ethnic variations in physiological responses, enzyme activities, drug metabolism, and prevalence of diseases are well known. Such differences may be ascribed to genetic polymorphisms, environmental modifications, tissue receptivity and responsiveness, and circulating levels of hormones. Racial/ethnic differences in responsiveness to sex steroids have been a particularly rich area for investigation and have been associated with significant differences in the prevalence of risk factors for obesity and diabetes, osteoporosis, and prostate cancer in men as described by Rohrmann et al. (1) in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. These investigators reported differences in androgens and estrogen levels in men over the age of 20 yr in a population that is representative of the United States and differed from other earlier studies by the large number of subjects studied spanning a wide age range across the nation.